Allyssa--Never An Answer

As people we often times wonder why others do the things they do or what drives someone to make one decision over another. This could be things such as , why do people cheat on their significant other, or why someone murders another, or even something as simple as why we pick out a long sleeve shirt over a short sleeve. Sometimes we can easily analyze the situation and come up with an answer for the action, but other times, we sit and wonder why, and ask ourselves, what was the motive that led up to what they did? When I was only nine years old I had a moment where I began to ask myself that question. My family and I had been on our way to the Los Angeles airport, we were going to be going on a vacation, a cruise to the Caribbean to be more specific, and there is not much I can really remember now from that trip, but I will never forget what happened on the way there. We had been driving on the freeway and nothing about it seemed unusual, traffic was normal, the same as it is everyday in the LA area, the sun was out, it was just an average Southern California day. As we were getting closer to the airport, traffic hit a sudden halt and we were not quite sure what was going on, I had never seen so many cars squeezed in one area. There was no movement, everyone's cars were practically parked in the middle of the freeway right under an overpass,then suddenly I heard my dad say “Oh my gosh look” and he pointed to the overpass above us and a man was standing on the edge, I did not know what he was doing, he stood there for a few minutes, I could hear people yelling at him but I never heard what they were saying, I had turned my head for a split second and when I looked back, the man had jumped. Being only nine I did not know what was going on, I had never seen anything like that before and I kept asking my parents if the man was ok and why he did that. As soon as the initial shock was over my grandma called 911, but unfortunately the paramedics got on the wrong freeway and did not get to us in time. So due to the fact there was no help coming any time soon my mom being a nurse, jumped out of the car, along with a doctor who was only a few cars ahead of us and one off duty police officer who had been there trying to talk the man down before he jumped, and with no time to waste they all quickly tended to the man who had just lunged to his death. I saw them perform CPR and wrap shirts and any other things people had in their cars to stop the man's bleeding, but it was not enough, after fifteen minutes of CPR and non stop continuous bleeding, the man stopped responding and was gone. I could see through the window that everyone was silent and that many started to cry, my mom came back to the car sobbing and looking defeated, I did not know what to think, I had just seen a man go from being alive to dead in a matter of minutes. To this day I will never forget one other thing my mom told us when she got to the car, she told us that the man's phone had somehow miraculously survived the fall, and while they were giving him CPR it went off a few times, it was not until they knew he was dead they checked it, on the screen he had two texts and a missed call with a voicemail. The first text was from what we found out was his twelve daughter and it read “Hi daddy, you left work before I could say happy birthday to you, so happy birthday! I love you daddy”, the second text was from his mom and it said “Happy Birthday son, I am so proud of the man you have become, I love you” and the missed call was from his wife, they played the voicemail once the police showed up and it said, “Hi honey I have something big to tell you tonight, I am sure it is the best birthday present ever, I love you so much and I will see you when you get home”, we found out later, her important news was that she was pregnant. To this day I have always wondered what drove that man to jump on his birthday, he had a beautiful family and a little one on the way. Ever since that day I realized that more often than not our questions will never be answered.